


I told it not, my wrath did grow.

by Panny



Category: Pretty Deadly (Comics)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, F/F, Love/Hate, Not A Fix-It, Temporary Character Death, Time Loop, Time Loop: the part where the looper thought it was finally over only to realize it totally isn’t
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-17
Updated: 2021-01-17
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:20:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,220
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28356870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Panny/pseuds/Panny
Summary: They were meant to be a pair, Ginny and Alice. Vengeance and Cruelty. But Cruelty is dead and Vengeance cannot rest.
Relationships: Big Alice/Deathface Ginny
Comments: 1
Kudos: 5
Collections: Bulletproof 20/21





	I told it not, my wrath did grow.

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Gammarad](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gammarad/gifts).



> Title taken from William Blake's _A Poison Tree_.
> 
> Since this exchange may result in some fandom-blind reading, I've included a canon primer in the end note.

**I.**

Alice’s hair is awash in moonlit silver, flowing behind her as she rides. She has allowed it to grow long and wild in the years since this new era began. Since the changing of the guard. Since the Death cycle took its due.

It’s a strange feeling—the world changing to fit a shape it was always meant to be. It comes quick as the snap of bones, but they’ve already been set by the time you notice you should be in pain. For Ginny it’s summed up in the second horse in her peripheral, a presence that already feels constant despite its newness. Vengeance and Cruelty were always meant to be a pair and though Ginny had always insisted on riding alone before, she doesn’t see much point in objecting now. Sissy doesn’t have her father’s tolerance for her self-isolation and Ginny doesn’t have the same desire to spite her. In this strange world without her own vengeance to drive her, the Gardener’s will gives her purpose at least.

They smell the battlefield before they realize they’ve come upon it, even Ginny’s eyes watering as the air flees to make room for something else. Alice doesn’t hesitate. She flings herself into the green haze of killing gas and her daggers flash, curving through the night like a smile. Sarah’s youngest is in there, frightened yet still alive, and so is the mission. Ginny follows after.

Ginny pushes to the front as red splits the sky, ensuring the boy—Cyrus—is behind the barrier of her sword first and foremost but wanting to push ahead of Alice too. And then the world explodes in fire and fear and smoke and they fade away in the yawning face of War. The souls in the trenches below her cry out in unison for a fight that has not yet been won nor lost and Ginny’s blood hums with duty. Her sword is a perfect extension of her body, her body is a faultless machine, and even so it is not long before she realizes that it will not be enough.

A gunshot rings out somewhere close by yet too far away to pay attention to, many moments before agony splits her own skin as the battle turns wrong. She feels the moment Alice dies like an itch in her throat. But the job’s not done. She doesn’t even stop long enough to play witness to her passing.

**II.**

The dark is absolute. Dark like a cloak. Like the underground. Like a dead Garden. Ginny’s usual calm abandons her in the wake of hot, prickling anger. There are things she cannot submit to and _he_ is at the top of the list.

She fights the dark, claws it back until she has to squint her eyes against the sudden glare of the moonlight. Her nose burns with something that isn’t quite a smell and it takes Ginny a moment too long to place the landscape in front of her. In her distraction, a man drifts out of the haze, ambling toward her. The barrel of his gun jerks sharply in her direction. He spots her and doesn’t register her face; all he can see are enemies. He’s not precisely wrong; she sure ain’t his friend.

Her arm shoots out in the moment the gun cracks, a hot burn scoring across the side of her face. And then the gun is no longer in the man’s hands and he is no longer standing. Alice darts through the night with more grace than her size should allow and spares Ginny a curious look, faint confusion puckering between her brows. Ginny leaves the rifle disassembled in the dirt and turns her attention to the boy in the gas mask, watching them both with wide, staring eyes.

“Ginny,” Cyrus says, surprised breath whistling through the filter of his mask. And then, hesitantly, like a man making a deathbed confession: “Alice.”

“Hello, Cyrus.” Alice’s smile curls sharp and too eager for an instant. Ginny doesn’t chastise her for it, wouldn’t have even if her mind wasn’t fixed on the overlapping repeat of moments. This battlefield had been empty last she remembers it, but the smell is the same. A sour prelude to decay that even the mortals could surely pick up—too many Reapers in one place. “Relax, boy. We’re not here to claim you—not yet.”

“What are you here for?” Cyrus lifts his chin, brave little soldier boy. For all the good it will do him in the end.

“We’d like to see you get home,” Ginny says. It had been the truth the last time she had said it, but maybe she should have meant it more. Maybe she owes Cyrus more than good intentions.

“That’s the sugar version,” Alice says, carelessly disaffected in a way that rings false. Alice loves delivering bad news, maybe even especially to the people she likes. “Truth is, boy, we mean to use you as bait.”

Ginny moves before the echo of words already answered—”For what?”—can even pass Cyrus’s lips. She doesn’t waste time waiting for Alice to tell him to run, waiting for him to hesitate. Alice will guard him if she asks again, but she’ll fail and they’ll both fall. She wishes she’d paid better attention to the order of it. Maybe it doesn’t matter.

“I’ve got the boy,” she says, pressing Cyrus low to the dirt, listening for the renewal of gunfire.

“And leave the big one to me? I guess you must like me after all.” Alice glances over her shoulder, eyes narrowed. She’s a focal point of eerie placidity in the tension rising around her. Her hair shifts obligingly away from her face, tugged by a wind Ginny can’t feel, and the question in her face is unmistakable.

Ginny isn’t sure she’d have bothered to answer, but the choice is taken from her as a lightning crack of red strikes in perfect harmony with the sharp _ra-ta-ta_ of the soldiers finding their nerve. For once in her long existence, Ginny sees the battle coming and forces herself to turn from it. She’s the thing that’s called when the protectors fail, so it takes all of her focus to do something as passive as keep Cyrus sheltered from the worst of the fallout, ducked behind what cover remains on offer. Her sword is a newly heavy weight on her back—a relic of a different era, out of place in a world of automatic weaponry, but she has never been good at letting things go. Maybe that’s one thing that does run in the family, though her lip curls at the thought.

Besides, Ginny knows guns and there’s one thing she can count on her sword not to do. It doesn’t jam.

The break in fire hits like a dropped beat and Ginny’s springing from her hiding place before the muttered curses can even start in earnest. She isn’t out to kill anybody today, not with War having already fed so well, and the soldiers can be thankful for that. They don’t expect her to be dangerous with the hilt and flat of her blade and that means they go down easier than they might, makes it simpler to save their fool lives. For however long that might last, though she hopes it will be long enough.

Later, she’ll kick herself for not seeing the shape of it already. The moment when it’s still going surprisingly well is the moment she should look up and see the shadow of the other shoe, waiting to drop. Instead she’s too caught up in the heat of it, too tuned in to any potential threat to Cyrus, for all he was never supposed to be the mission. He was just a bonus—a favour to an old scorpion on her deathbed, a little boy who’d grown up knowing her song by heart, a hurt Sissy wouldn’t have to feel just yet. A lot of good she turns out to be to any of them. Can’t see the forest for the goddamned trees.

It’s more than an itch this time. A stopped breath, caught in her throat, about the size of the space where Alice suddenly isn’t, long enough that she’s just barely too slow. She takes a shot to the shoulder and keeps moving. And then she takes the sharp end of a bayonet to the gut and doesn’t. It won’t keep her down forever, but it’ll still be too long. Cyrus yells out—her name or Alice’s or both—and then he’s lost in the thick of it. She grits her teeth, an old parable running through her mind.

Good luck or bad luck.

Who knows?

**III.**

She likes the dark no better for its familiarity. She fights it just as hard and rips her awareness from it like an inexorable tide.

She is not surprised by her surroundings this time, though her eyes narrow and her shoulders hitch in a way that has Alice glancing at her sidelong. The barren landscape, scraped raw by the battles fought in its name, provides no excuse for her distraction. She shrugs. Even as Alice obligingly turns away, Ginny knows she hasn’t really let it go. But she’ll concern herself with Alice’s questions later; if they both survive the night, she might even have answers for them. For now, she has other priorities.

Someone is playing with her and she’s been much too slow in figuring out the game. She doesn’t know what could hold the power to bring time to yield like this, but she’s lived too long and seen too much to flinch over the impossibility of it. The situation is what it is and if there’s one virtue that Ginny can lay claim to, it’s patience. She’s had a lot of practice getting good at waiting and watching and adapting. If it’s a matter of time, then she only needs enough to determine who wants reminding why it’s a bad idea to require Vengeance to visit you twice.

Ginny lets Alice be the one to chase Cyrus into the dark again because that’s the way it was the first time. She doesn’t know if it matters, but she won’t unless she tries it—unless she sees. She does know that this ends with the both of them dead. She guesses that detail shouldn’t matter, whatever her gut thinks of it. This is the way she’s always fought—trade a pound of flesh for a mile of ground. It was easier when it was her own skin she was bartering.

War doesn’t chase her when she backs off from the maelstrom of his power. It’s almost disappointing to realize that for as strong as he is, he’s so ordinary in this. Man, Reaper, it doesn’t matter. No one ever lowers their guard so fast as when they think they’ve already won.

A _caw_ is the only warning Ginny has before Molly settles on her shoulder, adding more weight than the hollow bones of her raven form should account for. Ginny takes it without flinching, compensating with a shift of her stance. “What brings you out here, little bird?” She remembers Molly’s voice, a flurry of feathered black—she should have thought to question it sooner. Molly’s brave, but she’s no warrior and Johnny wouldn’t let her alone in a place like this.

“I could ask you the same, Ginny. Ain’t like you to turn from a fight.” Curiosity, not reprimand. ‘Friend’ is a big word and Ginny isn’t generous with it, but they had stood and fought and died at the end of the world together, so maybe they’re something close.

“Then trust I won’t turn,” Ginny says. “Where’s your other half, Molly?”

As if in answer, a gun cracks somewhere in the dark. It shouldn’t be easy to pick out—there are plenty of bullets in the noise of it all—but something about the tone of it catches at Ginny’s ear, burrowing in like the snatch of an old song. She’s moving before she has a chance to think about it, barely noting the way that her speed unseats Molly or the men who try to come for her. When she comes upon the scene, the gun’s still hot enough to smoke.

“Dammit, Johnny, what the hell did you do?” The words scrape rough through the choked narrowness of her throat, squeezed tight with something beyond anger. Cyrus turns a too relieved look on her, eyes still soft and bright beneath the bullet hole in his forehead. She wishes she had time to deal with that, but she’s more than minutes too late for him. It’s Alice who’s still in the path of Johnny’s gun, sitting on the ground as more and more of her form falls apart, the bright orange of butterfly wings startling against the grey of no man’s land.

“What had to be done,” Johnny says. His gun doesn’t move, but the expression on his face is tired and weary. He doesn’t relish the kill and that makes it worse somehow. More pointless. As if in apology, he adds: “We hoped to take the boy where he belongs.”

“Like hell,” Cyrus says. “That thing means to keep the war going, right? I got friends out there—good men. I ain’t leaving them to die. I ain’t—”

“The horse,” Alice says and the words rasp strangely. There’s barely enough left of her to speak them.

“What’re you talking about?” Cyrus asks and falls to his knees beside her, all human compassion and pity. Ginny doesn’t need to hear the explanation, though she stands by for Alice’s last words anyway. She remembers this part—she just never put together that Alice was the one who figured it out. Two Reapers, not one. War had found his pair.

“Fear,” Alice says and Ginny can see the expression on Johnny’s face and the way the realization falls into place with a sense of rightness. It should have been obvious, but they’d needed Alice to die to see it. Ginny wonders if maybe that’s why Alice could—they’ve all seen the eyes of dead men enough times to recognize the look. She wonders if even Alice is afraid in—of—the end.

She sees Cyrus try to move toward the screaming spectre of War’s horse and catches him by the coat. “Go with Johnny.” She can feel the darkness rolling in and knows this chance is over. She doesn’t know if anything matters now—if anything persists after she’s gone. She doesn’t much care. It’ll feel good to hit something either way.

She marches on the horse without hesitation. War is beyond vengeance, beyond cruelty. Fear, on the other hand, is something she has long learned how to master.

**IV.**

Ginny finds no pleasure in knocking Johnny around. He yelps and curls like a kicked animal. Johnny isn’t as much a coward as he’d like to be, but he wears his fear and pain open on his face. It’s hard not to feel cruel, being the cause of it.

No wonder Alice likes playing with him.

“You don’t gotta do this, Johnny,” she says and doesn’t let her voice be sorry on her behalf. Molly’s tugging at her shirt sleeve, all betrayed-angry-bewildered noise, but it’s easy enough for Ginny to shrug her off. She can’t hold her human form if Johnny won’t relinquish his and he’s not fool enough to pick a shape that can’t reach for his gun.

He laughs, wheezing and bitter, arms wrapping over his middle like he expects her to strike him again. “I think that’s my line. What’ve I ever done to you, girl?”

“It’s not what you’ve done, it’s what you’re thinking of doing. Go home.”

He laughs again. Stronger now that he’s caught his breath—the sound barking from his chest. “You of all people want me to let this go?”

He’s got a point in that. She grits her teeth until they creak. “I’m sure she’s done more than enough to deserve it, but this ain’t the time.”

“If I don’t, she’ll kill me, Ginny. You know she will.”

“Then don’t be here when it’s over.” Ginny lets her eyes cut to where Alice emerges from the dark. It’s impossible to say how much she’s heard or what she might think of it. “We’ve still got a job to do.”

Alice inclines her head in acknowledgement, the pink scarred flesh around her lips stretching into something like a smile. She follows Ginny into the thick of it without complaint, listening as Ginny feeds her suspicions about the horse. It’s so much easier this time—two against two, and both sides knowing the score. She and Alice work so well together that they might have been a pair all along. Like they were always meant to.

When it’s over, Alice is still alive. So is Ginny, for that matter. She’s hurt, but not so badly this time for the help she had. Molly runs to her anyway—there must be some kind of fearsome fire in the woman that she can still stand to cradle Ginny’s head with such gentleness. That she can still care to see if Ginny is okay.

The dirt under her is reassuringly solid and even with her eyes closed she can’t find full dark, the sun finally peeking over the horizon. She’s never made it this far and her throat is dry but open. Alice left her lying in the dust, but Ginny’s paid that favour enough times and she doesn’t have the energy to be mad over the turnabout. That can be a tomorrow thing. The idea of ‘tomorrow’ is pretty damn nice.

It’s almost funny that all she’d had to do was beat fate into submission.

Molly’s smile feels like a sign, small and tremulous though it might be. “You did it, Reaper.” The words are sweeter than water on a dry summer day. It’s almost easy to ignore the strained corners of her eyes, the way that something like guilt lines them. It’s almost easy not to worry about the way that dust puffs up around her head, hitting the ground a mite too hard when Molly’s human form abruptly deserts her. Good luck or bad—she never can remember which one is which.

The shot that rings out is unmistakable and startling in the new quiet. Ginny closes her eyes and leans into the darkness, twisting against her nature to fall faster into the next run. Before it takes her, she feels a Reaper die. She chooses not to stay long enough to find out which one.

**V.**

The dark doesn’t lift like Ginny expects it to and it takes her a moment to realize her eyes are still closed. There’s a jolting, uncertain instant where she expects to open them and find herself still lying in the dirt. She’d made it to sunrise—maybe that’s all it ever was. Maybe it didn’t matter who lived or who died; it only mattered that Ginny kept herself going long enough to see the end of it all.

And then the world shifts underneath her and Ginny’s eyes snap open as she reaches to steady herself on her horse. Alice’s own steed is a few paces ahead, still and calm in the moonlight. Alice herself is much closer, leaning on Ginny’s mare’s flank, barely more than a shock of star-bright hair, the night leaking into her customary black clothes until they’re barely distinguishable.

“The boy won’t be pleased to see us, you know,” Alice says.

Ginny pulls her hood low and doesn’t look anymore. “They never are.” The truth of the words is bitter in her mouth.

**VI.**

Ginny’s fundamental problem is that she doesn’t know how not to get back up. It’s at the core of her—relentless energy, the impossibility of rest. She starts to wonder if she’s done this to herself somehow.

She half-contemplates if it might be worth killing Alice her damn self.

She hears the shot and pounds the ground beneath her, so hard her fist stings and throbs and she wonders if she’ll be able to grip her sword afterward. She wants to think the thing she’s choking on is rage. It’s the only thing she’s ever known how to feel this much.

Somewhere overhead, Molly screams her name, screams for her to _get up_.

Some thought flits through Ginny’s mind faster than she can hold it. Maybe _no_. Maybe _why_. She gets up. War’s put too many lives between her and his reckoning for her to do anything else. Alice is just one of them.

**VII.**

Johnny Coyote’s face blanches white in horror in the seconds before Alice puts a bullet between his eyes. He is sorry when he passes, form crumbling into the breeze too quick for him to try to hold it. He’s sorry that Ginny is lying on the ground with a hole in her chest, sorrier still for his part in it. If Ginny were able, she’d be sorry too for letting him think it was his fault. None of them are so sorry as Molly, who stretches the limits of a bird’s vocal cords in a mournful wail as she flies overhead.

Ginny’s death is not beautiful like Alice’s was. She doesn’t have the imagination for butterflies and whispered confessions. Her blood dyes the dirt below her the colour of fresh rust while her body grows cold and still and hollowed out. It’s human and ugly and novel, but there would be no Garden for her at the end. Sissy respects the cycle and would find her replacement in due time. Still, better Johnny’s gun than her Daddy’s; she’s not sure if she's more or less certain she’ll come back this time. She’s not sure which possibility she actually thinks is worse.

“You don’t even like me,” Alice says, voice dull with incomprehension. She doesn’t do anything either as practical or sentimental as try to staunch the flow; she merely kneels in the red pool and lets it sink into her knees and the tips of her hair, waiting through the death rattle of Ginny’s chest as men kill each other around them.

“I don’t like anyone.” It isn’t what she’s for.

“You like the Gardener. You like your humans.”

“I like balance.”

There’s a flash of anger in Alice’s face, twisting and clawing at her features until they become a mask that befits her title. Ginny knows where it comes from, can feel Alice’s hurt and fury and thirst call to her very being, cry out for slights to be answered and debts to be paid. Ginny doesn’t let the unspoken reminder of her own hypocrisy stop her from drinking it in. And then it fades to a wry, steel glint of amusement and that looks like Cruelty too. “Then you won’t be satisfied with this.”

Ginny doesn’t have breath left to answer, but they both know what she’d say. Satisfaction isn’t what she’s for either. Even so, Alice isn’t wrong. It burns through her: the dissatisfaction. The loose-tooth feeling that something’s wrong, that she won’t be able to leave alone until it’s set right. That her breath might never come back until the thing that chokes her throat might be cut loose.

Cyrus shouts something Ginny doesn’t catch and Alice stands; she doesn’t need to draw her gun because she never put it down. Ginny can still feel the crushing pressure of War out there in the dark and she knows that Alice will fall again. Johnny Coyote ain’t more than dust in the wind, but that’s nothing compared to War alone and less compared to a working pair of Reapers. Alice could’ve had that, if Ginny hadn’t been so careless, hadn’t got herself shot because she was so sick of Alice being shot. It always was meant to be the two of them. But she’d preferred to ride alone—or maybe she just didn’t trust things that ended in meant to be. Maybe that’s the payoff she’s earned; she spurned Alice at the start of it all, so now she’ll never be rid of her, always returning to moments before the point where they lose each other because Meant to Be can hold a grudge worse than either of them. And maybe the worst part of it is, she’s not sure she’d be rid of Alice now if she could.

Well, when it gets put like that. Seems obvious.

She’s ready when the blackness rolls in. She knows what this is now and there is only one path left to walk.

**VIII.**

Johnny opens his mouth to speak when he sees her, but she doesn’t stop. She doesn’t have time for explanations or apologies. Cyrus makes room for her next to what’s left of Alice without a word. He’s a good kid. It’s a shame this isn’t about him—he’d deserve it more.

Alice looks up at her as best she’s able, pale eyes reflecting what little light they have. “What are you doing here, Ginny? He’s still out there—I can feel it.” Her eyes narrow, scanning over Ginny’s impassive face. “That important to you to watch me go? I’m”—a waver, a harsh breath as a little more of her flits away—“flattered.”

“I don’t get to change this. Not really.” Ginny places one hand over where the bullet must have hit, where most of Alice’s shape is already gone. Tiny butterfly legs prickle and scramble over fingers before they take to the air. The flight path stirs the hair around the curve of Ginny’s jaw—she remembers now that she’d cut it short after Alice. It’d felt like the thing to do. “But I ain’t gonna just accept it _either_.”

Alice is unresisting as Ginny pulls her up—maybe surprised, maybe curious, maybe just unable to offer much in the way of resistance anymore. It takes no effort at all for Ginny to crash their lips together, the hard pressure of their teeth stinging for a moment before Ginny opens her mouth. The tang of iron surges over her tongue, Alice startling against her. It should be a brief moment given the circumstances, but it’s not in Ginny’s nature to be easily placated. It’s not in Alice’s nature to be kind either and maybe that, of all reasons, is why she finally kisses her back.

“I’m coming for you,” Ginny says into the space where their breath mixes together. “Wherever you’ve gone, you damn well don’t get to stay there.”

“When you find me, what will you do?” The scars are a stark, angry pink on Alice’s tanned face, twisting as she smiles. “Will you apologize?” The words fan over Ginny’s lips, teasing and testing. Alice is looking for a wound and part of Ginny wants to let her find it, wants to let her sink her fingers into it just to bind them more tightly together, so that wherever it is that Alice goes when she cannot return to the Garden, she will think of Ginny and hunger for nothing else. “I will _never_ forgive you.” A whisper. A promise sweetly delivered, sugar laced with arsenic.

“I know.” She can feel it, Alice’s grudge, furious and unrelenting. Strong enough to weave their fates together. She is nearly drunk on it.

The butterflies whisper across her face as they take to the air, their wings leaving behind a thousand kissing-cuts. The weight in her arms empties as the one on her shoulders returns anew.

This time, Ginny doesn’t wait for the darkness to lift.

Rage is always cold when it visits her. It manifests like a bright burn under her ribs, a feeling that never quite wanes, capable of enduring through the long expanse of time. Vengeance can be patient; in some ways that makes it more dangerous. She doesn’t struggle as the world shifts into focus around her. She doesn’t try to pull away from the thing that’s wrapped and twining over her arms and holding them immobile—like thick, thorny vines digging into her skin and leeching at her blood the way that any other plant would pursue water. Her voice is low and even when she says: “Get off.”

A hand smooths itself over her face, a sharp counterpoint to the pain, and Ginny can’t stop herself from startling at the familiar shadow that looms over her. For a moment she is still there—in the war, in the dream, in whatever game the Reaper of Obsession was playing. Then she narrows her eyes and spits, watching the empty echo of butterflies scatter. “This wasn’t the deal.”

“The deal.” Obsession’s voice curls over the word, filling up the entirety of the space around her. “What deal would that be, little Reaper?”

“You said you could lead me to Alice.” Ginny forces the words out through gritted teeth, the vines twining more firmly around her, thorns dragging at her skin. “I’ve got no interest in your shadows.”

“If I recall, you didn’t accept that bargain. If I recall, you traded your freedom for the girl’s.” She sees what passes for Obsession’s face flow over the edges of her perception—an absence of light that doesn’t really smile but still has too many teeth. “What would Alice think of that choice, I wonder.”

“If I recall,” Ginny says, closing her eyes for the reprieve of seconds, alone in her own head, “you betrayed that bargain. Clara got herself free.”

“If I recall, you betrayed it first when you tried to take her.” The room spins with shadows and the vines around her arms are suddenly claws and hands, thorns replaced with nails that are no less sharp. “But no matter—you are free to leave through the same method she did. If you can bring yourself to forgive.”

Ginny doesn’t answer. Obsession has asked her this before and never specified for whom it is she might find forgiveness. Alice. Johnny. Her father. Herself. In any case, her answer would be the same. They are all of them beholden to their nature. As Obsession well knows.

“I thought not. You would break yourself against your own regrets as many times as required before you would give up the grudge that binds you.” Obsession sounds pleased by this. “Again, I should think. We’ll take it from the top.”

The darkness comes again and Ginny fights until her skin tears and her muscles strain. But in the end, when Obsession’s realm fades away and she is no longer tethered enough to her real self to fight, a part of her is eager. Alice is waiting. And so is Ginny. Vengeance and patience are old friends.

**~~X~~ I.**

“The boy won’t be pleased to see us, you know,” Alice says. Her arm is at a casual rest against the flank of Ginny’s mare. It’s still strange having her so close without a blade between them. Ginny shifts in her saddle and fancies she can still feel Alice’s hand around her neck, driving her to the dirt. Good times, if the world wasn’t ending.

“I know,” she says, glaring out into the night. Impossible to guess what might be waiting in this kind of dark. “They never are.”

When Ginny rides out, Alice keeps pace beside her.

**Author's Note:**

>  **Canon primer for the uninitiated:**  
>    
> _Pretty Deadly_ is an ongoing Weird West comic that follows an ensemble cast. Among this ensemble are Reapers, ageless beings who deal with human souls and represent different aspects, many of them having once been humans who died themselves (though some we've met are considerably less humanoid). Of the recurring cast, [Deathface Ginny](https://imgur.com/ACMR2s2) is Vengeance, [Big Alice](https://imgur.com/6jfeGuJ) is Cruelty, and [Johnny Coyote](https://imgur.com/mbxXiII) and [Molly Raven](https://imgur.com/YGT3Zzx) together represent both Good and Bad Luck. Reapers are intended to work in pairs with complementary aspects, though we know that Ginny chose to "ride alone" rather than work with Alice until Volume 2. Deathface Ginny is the daughter of Death and a human woman referred to as "Beauty". A rule of the universe is that "every Death must die" and when her father refused to follow the cycle, Ginny and most of the rest of the principle cast worked to depose him and allow a girl named Sissy to take her place as "the Gardener"--the new Death. Alice largely acts as an antagonist during Volume 1, doing Ginny's father's bidding, fighting Ginny, and shooting Johnny at one point. During her confrontation with Ginny, Alice taunts her by scarring her own face in the pattern of Ginny's skeletal markings. Toward the end, when she confronts the group for the last time, she allows Johnny to shoot her in turn. When Reapers are [mortally wounded, they lose their form](https://imgur.com/xNMPSoF)\--in ordinary circumstances they would eventually be replaced with a new Reaper, but all the Reapers' forms are returned at the start of Sissy's cycle.
> 
> The comic's story line largely follows the interactions between Sissy and the Reapers and the family of a human woman named Sarah Fields. In Volume 2, Ginny, Alice, Johnny, and Molly all end up in the middle of a battle in France during WWI as they try to take down the [Reaper of War](https://imgur.com/JsLjVyC). Ginny and Alice are now working as partners under Sissy's direction. Sarah has reached the time of her death but her children have asked Fox (another Reaper) to hold off on escorting her soul in the hopes of seeing her youngest son, [Cyrus](https://imgur.com/1PeOn56), a soldier on the front line of this battle, make it home before the end. Cyrus is unfortunately killed, but his spirit lingers on battlefield, something crucial to both the conflict and Ginny's eventual victory. Johnny and Alice meet on the battlefield and end up in an unfriendly standoff--Johnny shoots Alice before finishing the count of three, resulting in her losing her form (for good this time). Before she discorporates, Alice reveals that there is another Reaper on the battlefield that none of them accounted for--War's horse is the Reaper of Fear.
> 
> Vol. 3 is amazing, but most of the story is irrelevant here. What is important to know is that Ginny has set out on a mission to find Alice and ends up in conflict with the [Reaper of Obsession](https://imgur.com/Sm2Rcaj) who has been keeping the soul of Clara Fields. During this confrontation, Obsession identifies Alice as Ginny's "obsession", taunts her with Alice's form, and suggests that it's capable of reuniting them. The volume ends with Ginny freeing Clara but being herself [trapped in Obsession's realm](https://imgur.com/LuEOm0L).


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